Juguemos en el bosque

Back in the day, I turned the classic children’s song “Juguemos en el bosque” into a game for my students to play and get in repetitions of clothing vocabulary. It was a great filler game and always an option for P.A.T., in addition to a planned part of the lesson for any unit that targeted high frequency structures that work with clothing (like wears and buys). I taught middle schoolers, Grades 6-8, and although this is very much a child’s game and perhaps better suited for elementary, my students still enjoyed it very much. Since it’s modeled after a classic elementary P.E. class game, I think that part of the fun for my older students was in reminiscing. Once we’d played it a bunch of times and the students had memorized the lines, we played outside whenever weather permitted.

Click on the image to download a projectable script and lyrics handout

Before playing:

Introduce the song to students. Make sure that students know what the various lines of the song mean, then show them a video of the song. There are many versions on YouTube, and I prefer this one:

To play the game:

One student is the wolf; the rest of the students are children.

Have “the children” line up along one side of the room. “The wolf” should stand in the middle of the room. Consider projecting the script with sample articles of clothing in Spanish for the class to reference as they play (included in this .zip file).

The children repeat the chorus, “Juguemos en el bosque….¿lobo está?”

The wolf puts on an article of clothing while saying, “Me estoy poniendo [article of clothing]”. Have a pile of fun clothes for the wolf to choose from! If no clothing is available, the wolf should mime putting on the clothing.

The children repeat the chorus again, ending with the question, “¿lobo está?”

This back-and-forth repeats as many times as the wolf chooses: it could be just once, it could be three times…it could be six times! When the wolf wishes, s/he shouts, “¡Ya salgo para comerlas a todos!” instead of “Me estoy poniendo…”. The children then try to run from one side of the room to the other. The wolf should “eat” (tag) as many as possible. Anyone that is tagged joins the wolf in the center of the room.

Start over from the beginning. The students that the wolf tagged no longer have a speaking role, but they help the wolf tag students that are still “in” whenever those students run from one side of the room to the other.

The game continues until only one student remains “in”, and all other students are tagged and members of the wolf’s army.

I grew up playing the game in Colombia and I play it with my students. We have a lot of fun. In my version the wolf catches the next wolf and the student wolf answers to the question “?lobo estas listo? By describing with details what she or he is wearing.

I played a version of this growing up but it was called, “What time is it Mr. Fox?” The fox would say different times while keeping their eyes closed after the other kids would ask the question. Then randomly the fox would say, “12:00 lunchtime!” and that’s when everyone would run. So I guess you could also play it in Spanish using “¿Qué hora es?” as well.